Australian keeper-batter Matthew Wade admitted he was in the wrong in his controversial run-in with Mark Wood last week and suggested he would have walked off with no complaint had he been given out.
The incident happened in the second T20I between Australia and England. On the 3rd ball of the 17th over, when Mark Wood hurried Wade with a sharp short ball, which the left-hander top-edged onto his helmet.
Mark Wood tried to go for the catch in his follow-through, but Wade put his hand out to stop the bowler from making a full attempt as he dived into his crease.
Captain Jos Buttler and Wood questioned the umpire, but when the officials asked Buttler to appeal for it, he declined.
In the aftermath of the incident, the 34-year-old explained he had been left dazed by the blow (he had top-edged the Wood bouncer into his helmet before his arm made contact with him) but insisted he had not consciously intended to stop the dismissal.
"That looked horrible when I saw it after the game. It was one of those things that just happened so fast. I think Kane Richardson said to me when I got off the ground, 'You pushed him, basically'. I was like, 'No, I didn't'. And then I saw the replay and I was like, 'Well, yeah, I did',” Wade told cricket.com.au's The Unplayable Podcast.
"(Wood bowling at) 150 (kph), decent crowd – at first I didn't know if I hit it. It hit me in the head hard, it rung my bell a little bit, (I) went to run down the wicket, Davey (Warner) sent me back, I turned and saw point running in. Then I wasn't sure if I was going to get run out or where the actual ball was. It all just happened literally like that. And then next minute, I was on the ground, looked up and the ball was like coming down. So yeah, it didn't look great,” the left-hander added.
Moreover, Wade said that he would not have protested had Buttler appealed and he had been given out.
He said: "If I had a conscious thought of doing it, then I'd be regrettable for doing it. But at the time, there's just so much happening and getting hit in the head with the bloke bowing 150ks at you – things go in fast forward. Now looking back on it, I can see like all these things happened. It was chaos out there. If they had appealed and I saw it on the replay, so be it, I would have walked off the ground, there's not much I could do about it."
Australia lost their warmup match to India on October 17 and will now play New Zealand at SCG on Saturday, October 22.
